Flashpaste supports automatic substitution of certain inserted text fragments with one taken from the dictionary. Here the dictionary is an arbitrary set of “key name” — “key value” pairs; a key is an arbitrary name used as an identifier; and a value is the text for substituting the inserted string.

The dictionary supports both plain-text and formatted-text values. Each database contains its own dictionary. If you use both common and local databases, then the dictionary to be used will be compiled from the above two dictionaries. The local database’s key value has a higher priority than the common database’s one. So if you have a same-name key in both dictionaries, the local key value will be used.

Creation end editing of dictionaries

You can create and edit dictionaries just like you handle the template database. To switch to the dictionary editing mode, go to the main menu: File -> Common Dictionary or File -> Local Dictionary.

Using

For automatic substitution of inserted text fragments, the %Dictionary(...)% macro is used, where the round brackets contain the key name. To quickly add this macro to your strings and easily select keys, go to the main menu: String -> Insert Macros -> Text from Dictionary: %Dictionary(...)%

You can use automatic substitution for two main purposes:

1. If you need to use the same substring in multiple places and change it from time to time in all of them. For example, it can be the mail addresses, phone numbers, and names of your contacts. If these data change, you will only need to modify the corresponding dictionary entries, and all the strings using them will be updated automatically.

2. Substitution of substrings in common templates with local data. If you use a common database with standard answer templates, you may need to personify the templates. In this case, your local dictionary may contain your name, email address, and other personal information, while the common templates will include links to the dictionary, for example: %Dictionary(PersonName)%.